At some point, someone decided that what unassuming folk songstress Joan Baez needed was a big budget double album. While Joan moved further and further from the bare recordings of her debut with each subsequent release, Blessed Are… is a massive affair. Most of the songs have about a dozen people involved, and many of the songs have pushed past the boundary of folk straight into country western.
I’ve decided to blow through these next few Joan Baez records so I can move on to records I’m more excited to listen to (John Coltrane, Johnny Cash, Joy Division…)
After Joan Baez/5, I expected this record to continue the downward trend of her discography. After all, half of the songs are Bob Dylan covers, so clearly she’s just using her friendship with him to further her own career, right? Well…no.
In the five years between Joan Baez’s debut and her third studio album (entitled 5, on account of the 2.5 live albums also released) something strange happened in the landscape of popular music: it became marketable.
Three years ago, I was sorting through my records and said to myself, “why do I have so much Joan Baez? I haven’t even listened to these.” Realizing that there were many other records I also hadn’t played. I started this very blog, anticipating that it’d take me about a year to get through my 400 piece collection. I was wrong, and it’s taken me three years to get to the very discography that inspired the project in the first place.